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We’ve tested lead magnets and found several consistent qualities of the really successful ones.
And while your lead magnet does not need hit the target for every one of these criteria, the more you can achieve, the better.

Your Lead Magnet Should Have These 8 Elements

1. One Big Benefit:

Your lead magnet should deliver one big thing to your subscribers, rather than a bunch of smaller things.

For example, instead of offering the big encyclopedia of internet marketing, you might offer the one breakthrough method that netted you $143,548 in 6 months, or the one traffic trick that sent 54,032 targeted visitors to your site last month.

2. Specificity:

The more specific your lead magnet promise is, the better. The promise should be compelling to the people you are targeting.
Notice in the examples above we didn’t offer to show them how to make money – we offered to show them how we netted $143,548.
And we didn’t offer a traffic method – we offered a method that drove 54,032 visitors in one month.

3. The End Result:

Your readers are searching for a specific outcome. So the question is, does your lead magnet get them closer to achieving that result?
For example, if they’re looking to get their child into college, you might offer a calculator that shows them how much they need to save each year, based on the child’s current age.

4. Relationships Building:

Your lead magnet should set you or your business up as the authority they can trust.
This is easy to do if you’re giving them great content that solves an immediate problem they have.

5. Instant Gratification:

Is your lead magnet delivered immediately? It should be. They opt into your list, and the next page tells them to either download it or check their email for the download or access link.

6. High Perceived Value:

While your lead magnet might only be a PDF or a video, the content itself should be immediately valuable to the new subscriber. If it’s something they would willingly pay for, then you know you’ve hit the mark.

7. Fast Consumption:

Your lead magnet should be something that can be consumed in 20 minutes or less. Here’s why:
When you set up your entire funnel, it will hopefully consist of a lead magnet, followed by a small (trip wire) offer for a low price.
If they take this trip wire offer, you’ll immediately make your core offer. If they take the core offer, you’ll immediately offer your big ticket item. For example, you offer a free lead magnet on one easy trick to curb procrastination. You follow this up with a $7 eBook on 7 methods to get more done in less time. Next is a $47 offer to forever curb procrastination in 30 days.

And finally you offer one-on-one coaching for $300 on how to use all this new found time to create a bigger, better, richer life.

Do you see why we want them to consume our lead magnet fast? We want them to use it, love it and want more. That way when we immediately offer more, they’re ready to buy.

8. Delivering Your Lead Magnet

If you don’t already have an email service such as Aweber or GetRepsonse, you’ll need to do this now.

If you’d like to start for free, try Mailchimp. Their smaller plan is free and you won’t pay until you upgrade later.
ConvertKit is a new email service to consider, and bloggers love it for how easy it is to initially set up as well as to segment your lists.

Your email service will provide opt-in boxes that you can place on your website in various places, as well as creating a landing page / squeeze page.

If you do have a website of your own, place your lead magnet in the sidebar, after each post, in the header or the Hello Bar,as well as a Pop-up Opt-in such as OptiMonk or OptinMonster.

In recent years, Facebook Fan page engagement has proven to increase sales and increase revenue for online businesses. This practice has also come under criticism from various Social media marketers. Some claimed Facebook fan page engagement is not as effective as before while some maintained it is still very effective if not even more. The fact is that Facebook engagement has very positive benefits for online business if properly utilized.

It takes hard work to get very popular with your Facebook fan page and also get people to interact with it. The benefits of having more people interact with your fan page are enormous and give you an edge over your fellow competitors within the same niche or industry. It is obvious that when people engage more frequently with your content, Facebook algorithms show those posts to more people to increase your visibility and engagement. Even though it might sound so simple, it’s not as simple as that. This is because there are series of rules every successful internet marketer will have to follow or take into consideration for them to be able to increase their Facebook Fan page engagement.

The following tips will educate you on how to increase your Facebook fan page engagement

1. Using Photos:

Photos plays a very important role on social media especially when the photos are very attractive and informative. Using quality photos on your Facebook Fan page will help draw the attention of your visitors and fans to take a look at your post. Studies have shown that post with attractive photos increase engagement over 300% and encourage people to like and share your post and pages. Photos should be taken serious on Social media marketing especially on Facebook Fan page in order to increase engagement and likes on your Fan pages.

2. Use Facebook Live:

This is another great way of getting more fans and increasing your engagement on your fan page. However, I think this works better when you already have some fans on your fan page. This platform is new and is already creating waves on Facebook and social media in general. It enables you to broadcast events live and connect with your audience on Facebook. It is simply an amazing tool for social media marketing. Use it and use properly.

3. Post Frequency:

You might want to post more often on your Facebook Fan page to show seriousness and consistency in the eyes of your audience, Facebook and search engines. The more frequent you post, the more people will see your posts and interact with them. Also, FB will rank your page better and show your post to more people within your niche. Consider posting frequently on your Facebook fan page if you really want to increase engagement. Make sure you know when your audience will be on Facebook so you can get more response from them within few minutes of posting.

4. Use the Facebook News:

Do you know a lot of people get their news mostly from Facebook these days? Well, a lot of people check their Facebook news feeds first thing in the morning and even within the day. Using this will make you become their source of news and information especially when you are the first to post on your wall. Always find informative and important news to share with your audience. Also, make sure the news you are sharing is relevant and within your marketing niche. Doing this will encourage them to engage and share your content with their family and friends which may result in more fans and followers on your fan page.

5. Post Timing:

You need to target and post your content when you think your audience will be online or when they can see your post. There are three times you may want to post to get them engage with your content. The first time, you need to post when they are about to wake up, secondary, you need to post when they are on break and thirdly when they close from work and get home. You must know when your audience is able to see your post instantly so you can encourage them to engage with them.

6. Call to Action:

Your audience is loyal in most cases and would easily do what you ask of them. There is nothing wrong in asking them to click, comment, like and share your post. You could convince them to follow you in order to get more quality information always and also encourage them to like and share your content by asking them. Just find a way to convince them to engage more with your content.

Hope these tips are useful. Please leave your comments and suggestions below. See you again.

Facebook can be a swirling vortex in which time disappears.
It can also be a great platform for connecting with everyone from friends and family to business partners and potential clients.
Here are 4 simple ways you can stay out of the vortex and be productive (in no particular order).

1. Know Your Goals
Why are you on Facebook? How do you plan to leverage it for your business?
Keep your personal connecting time and your business networking time separate if you really want to get results from your time on Facebook. Clicking on cute images like that of cats, and watching funny videos friends are sharing aren’t so much “business” networking… instead go engage with your fans and clients on your business page and get some conversation going, or visit fan pages of your colleagues and clients to see what you can contribute to the conversations there.
Remember what you’re working towards when you’re there for “work” and use your time effectively.

2. Protect Your Time
Use a timer when you get on Facebook. Set it for the amount of time you’re willing to spend and then discipline yourself to be done when the timer goes off.
Need a little more help? Try LeechBlock or Rescue Time.

3. Customize Your Chat Settings
What’s your time worth a minute? I keep my chat turned off. Here’s how you can turn your off, or customize it just to show you online for family or close friends:

Step i: Click the gear icon in the bottom right area of your screen.

Step ii: Choose whether you want to show up only for certain people or be completely off chat. If you don’t want to be visible to anyone just uncheck “available to chat” and skip to step iv.

Step iii: Choose who to be visible to, then save with the “Okay” button.

Step iv: Click the little arrow button to hide the sidebar so you don’t see the live stream of updates and who’s online.

4. Get Better Notifications
Turn off Facebook email notifications for things like group posts and replies. Do you need 50+ emails a day? Or do you just need to know what’s going on in your social space? I use NutShell Mail and PostRank to watch mine. They’ll take all your activity and put it into one email for you so you can see what’s happening easily.

With these four strategies you can be effective on Facebook without spending a lot of time on the site.

Today, there are thousands of businesses that are being affiliated or conducted over the social media sites. Twitter is among the huge online social networking websites that helps people conduct their business and making them be aware of the products in the market as well as getting hot deals and finally driving more traffic to their own websites. Statistic shows a timeline with the amount of monthly active Twitter users worldwide. As of the fourth quarter of 2017, the micro-blogging service averaged at 330 million monthly active users. This present a powerful marketing tool for business around the world to reach out to their potential customers using this social platform.

Creating a Twitter account is usually very easy and free; there are methods that have been proven to be effective in generating more traffic to the website using Twitter account.

Here Are Your 7 Steps

Step 1: Open A Twitter Account: you are required to sign up and create a Twitter account; name of the business should be used as the nickname of the account. You should also be able to state information about the business or website and not forgetting to put down the business website or blog URL .

Step 2: Background: Getting a cool and nice looking background with an easy to remember username is also another way of ensuring that those whom you follow will also turn and follow back. Your background should be bright colours to make it stand out among the millions of background on twitter. It is possible to design new Twitter background of your choice using the Google or other sites that are offering Twitter background designs. Canva or puresilver banner maker are also good background tools.

Step 3: Follow People: Search and follow leaders and their followers in your niche. There are more chances of everyone following business of the same nature as yours, and could potentially follow you back, leading to more traffic to the business site. Always make sure not to follow too many people in a day since Twitter does not like people who are following aggressively in one day, and will block your account (It happened to me several times). This is a mechanism of twitter to protect its customers/users, it is nothing personal. Ideally following 100 in a day, few at different times of the day should be fine. Remember to follow back those who follow you, otherwise some will unfollow you.

Step 4: Post Tweets: As a way of advertising the business, you need to have quality posts since this will also attract people to know more about the business. Posts are considered as powerful communication tools that links you and your business prospects, and also reaches out to followers and public at large.

As a way of ensuring that followers don’t get bored in anyway, you should have natural tweets and always be active in your account to create attention to new followers and incoming tweets. It is advised that tweet should fall into three categories: Entertaining, Educative and informative. Many people will want to re-tweet such contents to their followers hence growing the number of people that are following your business online. Twitter is a very busy platform, hence many tweets, 4-8 a day is recommended.

Step 5: Tweet Timing: Another way to get traffic from Twitter is to tweet during the right prime times when most peopleTwitting are active. It is the best way to expose your tweets to masses.

You should make more connections with other active Twitter users.

At this stage, you should be able to build a personal email list using Twitter account. You can also post links to the products and generate more sales.

Step 6: # Hashtags: With Popular hashtags in your tweet, twitter will display your tweet to all the people who are using a similar #hashtag even those who do not follow you. This is powerful because of the exposure it brings to your business.

Some of the daily hashtags are:

#MondayBlues. Feeling a little low after the weekend? …

#MotivationMonday, #MondayMotivation. These hashtags allow you to offer motivational advice or inspiration to your followers. …

#MancrushMonday, #MCM. …

#MusicMonday. …

#TravelTuesday. …

#TipTuesday. …

#WomanCrushWednesday, #WCW. …

#WayBackWednesday.

Step 7: Tweet on Trending Topic:

A trending topic is a subject that experiences a surge in popularity on one or more social media platforms for a limited duration of time. Ecommerce businesses can check social media trends to find out what’s holding consumer interest and capitalise on the current conversation. Also, events such as World Cup game, Olympics games, breaking news etc. The topic could be worldwide, regional or national. Do remember to make your tweet relevant to your niche though. This works in similar fashion to using hashtags. As so many people are tweeting on the topic, your tweet on same topic is likely to be seen by thousands of twitter active users.

So, there you have it, your 7 steps to getting twitter followers for your business. Get traffic from Twitter the easy way today and increase your business visibility, sales as well as build a strong business network using free Twitter account.

If this information has been useful, please let me know by commenting below. Your suggestions on any more information is welcome. Thanks for taking your time to read.

As a newbie, you can sometime wonder what you should do next for your business. Getting customers is key, right! but this requires consistent daily actions on your part to keep your prospects engaged with you, as you build the relationship to move them towards a buying decision.

How can you ensure that you are taking the steps towards gradually moving your audience into paying clients. That is what I will be explaining with Five activities in this articles. Lets dive right into this!

1) Write a blog

2) Schedule Social Media Post

3) Comment on your audience comments

4) Create a Freebie, Lead Magnet

5) Send emails to your subscribers

1) Write A Blog

You might be thinking, gosh!, how on earth can I write a blog with a short space of time?

Before I answer that, I just want to explain why Blogging?

Blogging is one most important thing every business should do, big or small. Blogging provide Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) opportunity for your website because of the high text involvement. Also, when people stumble on your website, they are likely to stay longer reading your blog. Besides, blogging position you as the expert in your niche.

Back to the timing issue, you need to produce good content, but it is important to say away from perfectionism and train yourself to do this in stages. That is getting the topic, keywords, and then the writing part.

2) Schedule Social Media Post

Posting to social media can feel overwhelming at times. But doing it ahead of time – especially in batches – can make the whole process so much faster! I highly recommend using a social media management toolto schedule your posts. Not sure WHAT to post? Try a tool like Post Planner to find content that has already proven popular in your niche. Equally using Buzz-sumo, to find out social Media post that are liked, commented and shared most. This include articles as well.

3) Comment on your audience comments

You can respond to A LOT of comments in one hour! Check your Facebook and Instagram comments, Twitter mentions and blog comments to see which ones need responses. And, don’t forget to respond to your social ad comments as well!Agorapulseis a GREAT tool for making sure you never miss a Facebook or Instagram ad comment again. Not only are you going to comment on your own post comments and response, you will take the opportunity to comment on other people’s post, including leaders in your niche.

4). Create a quick freebie/lead magnet

Lead Magnet is the incentive gift you offer to your audiences in exchange for their email addresses so you can send them emails to build a relations with them and gradually move them towards a buying decision. Relationship building is key in marketing your business.

Some lead magnets will take much longer than an hour to create. Creating a simple one or two-page guide, checklist or template shouldn’t take you more than an hour. Some ideas for your lead magnet:

Email Marketing is the number one means by which online marketers make massive amount of money. Email Marketing alone accounted for 47% of income in the online space in 2017.

Some of my best emails have been written in 30 minutes or less. So, don’t assume you need to spend hours slaving away at your newsletter in order for it to be effective! Some ideas for your next email blast:

a weekly roundup of what’s happening in your industry

a flash sale

exclusive coupons

a note of support or encouragement

repurposeing an old blog post

giving a list of industry-related tips or tricks

Click below to watch my recent video on what you can do within an hour or less

Once you’ve created a Facebook fan page, the next biggest hurdle is how to attract and more importantly keep people on your page. You need to give them enough to keep them interested, but also want to be able to send them to your website.
Here are 11 great tips to captivate your audience:

1. Use a 600 X 200 pixel photo
Create a photo that is 600 pixels high and 200 pixels wide, as that will maximize the space available for your photo on your Facebook fan page. On the photo include a picture of you or your brand, and include links to your websites, YouTube channels or any other URL’s you want your readers to visit.

2. Tell Your Story
Give your fans your story. People love to know the real people behind companies, so give them some personal information about you. Make it relate to your company, but also show off your personality so they can get to know you better.

3. Link Your Posts To Your Blog
When you make comments or posts on your Facebook fan page, try and link back to your blog as well. The best way to do this is to tell your readers about an event or interesting post you’ve made and direct them to your blog for more information.

4. Have Special Offers for Fans Only
Create a special Giveaway or discount offer for people who have “liked” your Facebook fan page. This is done by using the Reveal Tab and was created by Facebook for exactly that purpose, revealing content only to people who have liked your page. Do a search on Google for Facebook Reveal Tab to get more information.

5. Ask Fans To Invite Their Friends
When someone “likes” your page ask them to tell their friends about it also. You only need a few people to do this and if they have a lot of friends you can very quickly get hundreds more people to your page. But, if you don’t ask them they won’t do it so don’t be shy!

6. Link To Your Twitter And YouTube Channels
Get all your social media channels into one place. Several Facebook applications allow you connect your Twitter and YouTube accounts directly to your Facebook fan page. This gives your fans an easy way to find out more about you and your company from one central location.

7. Add A Poll To Your Page
Adding a poll application to your page with a few simple questions is a great way to interact with your fans. You can structure it to find what they like about your product, what they don’t like, what they want to see in your product. Use your imagination as this can be a powerful way to find out your fans needs and wants.

8. Get Fans To Talk About Your Product
Allow your fans to film a short video (30 secs) about your product or company and upload it to your page. This is an excellent way to get testimonials and keeps other fans entertained. You have full control over what you allow to be shown, but also set a few ground rules when you give your fans this opportunity.

9. Let Fans Upload Their Own Pictures
Also let them upload their own pictures. You get the final say (as with videos) at what appears there, but try and get them to take a photo with your product in it.

10. Add Your Flickr Stream To Your Page
If you use Flickr, the most popular photo sharing web site, you can directly link to your Facebook fan page from Flickr. You also get to decide which photos are made public and which are not, so you can only show images you want to.

11. Show Outside Links To Your Product or Brand
If any other websites have talked about you or your product, then create a post that links to them from your fan page. Maximise the buzz about your product!

Everyone gets writer’s block from time to time. In the blogging world, it’s easy to get stuck if you run out of ideas about what topics to write about. If writing more blog articles means more business, then you probably don’t want to get stuck very often. One way to avoid this is make a checklist of content creation ideas that can help your online marketing program.

1. Your Knowledge of the Field

Some interesting blog ideas could stem from your knowledge of the field you’re in. Try to think about something you learned when you were relatively new to your industry or if you ever had any epiphanies, people will want to read about them. Any insight you can offer that may seem like common sense to you may be a great help for newbie’s that are just starting out.

2. Experiences with Your Clients

Thinking about previous experiences that you’ve had with clients can also help inspire new ideas about various topics. If there are reoccurring questions that keep coming up, or overall trends that you’ve noticed, those could be great subjects to write about. The kind of advice you offer to clients on a regular basis can be a good starting point for a topic. If you keep having conversations with clients about new software that’s supposed to help with social media campaigns, your clients would probably be interested in what you have to say.

3. Customer Service – from Both Sides

If you’ve completely run out of ideas or want to take a break from discussing your industry, it can be helpful to talk about other topics that relate to any business such as customer service. There are constantly new and innovative ways for improving customer service and customer relations, so doing a little research or asking clients what they think about your services can get you thinking about ways to improve your strategy.

4. Big News and Interviews

According to BlogSuccess.com, they recommend “finding a big news item and relating it to your niche” or “interviewing an expert from your niche.” People are always interested in the latest news and connecting larger stories to your field in a creative way will almost ensure that you will grab readers’ attention. Also, interviewing experts in your field, especially if they are colleagues, can help spark ideas. You could even write a piece on them, allowing them to give advice to clients who are just starting out. They would probably very much appreciate solid tips from someone you consider a veteran.

5. Your Opinions on Your Subject

What do you believe in? If you think your industry is headed in a certain direction, you could share insights with your audience. Such as, if you think certain platforms are more effective than others, you could write why you think so. Also, the more persuasive and confident you sound about your beliefs, the more likely people will be to trust your brand.

6. Ask Questions

Asking questions is a good way to start an open dialogue with your readers. It’s a surefire way to get a conversation started about common questions that people may have about your industry. People also love to share their opinions. Creating a forum for people to discuss their concerns will ensure that their attention is captured. Additionally, starting an open dialogue with customers can help build trust between them and your brand.

7. Answer Questions

Are there common questions that customers keep asking you? You could write an article about various frequently asked questions that you’d been receiving. If you pick questions that could apply to your entire field, the likelihood of increasing the visibility of your article goes up. It’s also always nice for customers to conveniently read an article that answers questions in a straightforward manner without having to search for it.

8. Social Media Shares on Google+ or LinkedIn

Go Social. Visit your circles on Google+ or LinkedIn and ask people about topics they’re interested in. If you can get a good conversation flowing on these platforms, ideas should start flowing. Sometimes your greatest resources are in your immediate circle, so why not take advantage of them?

9. Get Controversial

We are conditioned to pay attention to controversy, whether it is from our celebrities, politicians or the economy (need I say more). We love to be shocked or at the very least offer our opinion. Take a hot button issue in your industry and write about it. The more controversial, the more traffic or attention your post will attract. Obviously you don’t want to get too personal and tarnish your reputation, but a little pot stirring can set things in motion. Like the old adage, “It’s better to be talked about, than ignored.”

10. Humour Engages Readers

Everybody wants to be entertained. Humour breaks down barriers and makes people more receptive to your message. People will breeze through your post if you sprinkle a little personality into it. A recent post included a cartoon with Steve Jobs standing at the pearly gates in front of God and Moses, with God saying, “Moses, meet Steve; he’s going to update your tablets!”

Your Comments Are Appreciated!

We welcome readers to comment on how you avoid topic block and share some of your successful techniques to boost your readership and traffic.

Setting up effective company Social Media accounts is a bit of a different process than setting up personal accounts and there are some tricks involved. So even if you know how to technically set up these accounts or already have accounts for your company, you may still want to read this article to get some interesting pointers that can help make your efforts more effective.

The first thing you want to do to get your company started in Social Media is set up your accounts. Here is a list of some of the major sites that you should start with. There really is a vast number of Social Media sites out there worldwide, and we’ll talk about that in a later blog regarding this topic. These are the sites you’ll want to focus on first:

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google+
YouTube

Setting up these accounts is really quite easy. The sites take you through the set up process step-by-step. For that reason I’m not going to go through the steps here. However, be aware that setting up these accounts takes time, so block off a couple hours for yourself to ensure you aren’t rushed and you do it right the first time.

I will however give you some pointers to help make your accounts more effective:

Account Name:

Be sure to make your company accounts in your company name, not your own. This may seem like a silly tip but it can be overlooked. Remember your company Social Media account is a separate entity from you as a person. For example, use your business email instead of your personal email to set up all of your accounts. If more than one person will be managing your Social Media be sure to set up your sites with an account that can be accessed by all those involved.

Be informative.

Fill out the company information on each site. Usually this includes your company name and location, what if anything you specialize in and your contact information – including your website!

Be concise.

Nowhere is being concise so important as on social media sites. Don’t write long paragraphs describing your business. Keep it short, sweet and informative so people can understand what your company is about in mere seconds.

Connectivity:
Decide how you want to connect with your audience. Before you go out there trying to get followers or fans, be sure you know how you want to connect with your audience. This is a particularly important if you have more than one person in your company doing your social media posts. Your answer to this question will vary considerably depending on the way you feel comfortable communicating.

Communication:

It may also depend on your company size, culture and the type of industry you’re in. A personal trainer, for example, would more likely have a more personal approach in their social media efforts, maybe discussing some personal fitness goals and meal tips in a more casual manner. On the other hand, a large oil and gas corporation or municipality would more likely take an arm’s length approach, discussing the news and events in their industry. However these aren’t rules that are set in stone. Social media is for the most part still undiscovered territory, so keep your mind open to possibilities when it comes to how you communicate.

Start posting:

Once you have set up your account and know how you want to communicate, start doing some posts. Some companies do 15+ posts a day while others only do one or two. The number of posts you choose depends on your time, your audience and your personal preference. The important thing to remember here is not the number of posts you do, but it’s the quality of the posts and how they market your business and hopefully attract followers, fan and potential clients. We will offer some tips on how your can do higher quality posts in an upcoming blog called Tips for Quality Social Media Marketing.

Social media marketing comes with its own flow! Just like you shouldn’t be expecting yourself to speak Italian fluently, without you getting trained in the basic and a beginner course, in a similar manner, you can’t get stressed on not acquiring the following that you want without knowing the basic tenets. If you are seeking help and guidance, any professional SEO company will have the following to share.

Understanding social media marketing?

Over the past decade, Social Media has witnessed exponential growth that most companies have made this an integral aspect of their overall Marketing Strategy. As per the Social Media Marketing Industry Report in 2015, approximately 96% Marketers are resorting to it in their Marketing Strategies.

It is essential to understand, why Social Media Marketing has become this important! From the business perspective, here are some of the ways in which it has been a boon to businesses and organizations.

Importance of Social Media Marketing

1. You get to know more of your audience and the overall market scenario through rich interactions

2. Helps you establish your vast customer base.

3. Allows you to respond to the online community that will save time to get to know your customers. If you had to know them on a one-on-one basis you will have to shell out a huge amount of time.

4. You get the scope to narrate your brand story.

5. You have the chance to maximize your online sales and earn high revenues.

6. Allows you to reduce the marketing expenses

7. You are clued into other market players and can plan to stay ahead of the competition

Get your social media marketing strategy:

When you realize the power of Social Media, you certainly would love to have a Strategy! Though the internet is buzzing with several guidelines and ways to get this done all by yourself, it’s always better to seek professional assistance. This is where you might as well want to join hands with an expert and reliable digital marketing company.

As a service provider, these companies take into notice your existing online marketing and plan and improvise on it, with their inputs. However, if you want to incorporate a Social Media Marketing plan, here are a few components that you must include in the plan.

1. Setting out your goals and a long-term vision

2. You need to arrange for an audit to get valuable insights

3. Generate and enhance all your social accounts

4. You have the chance to drive your inspiration from your competitors, the clients and also other leading market players

5. Generate a content marketing plan

6. Have your editorial calendar ready as well

7. Examine, analyze and also manage your Social Media Marketing Strategy from time to time

When you are setting out on your Social Media Marketing Strategy, you need to keep a check on the salient points. These guidelines will enable you to take the best approach to make it work in your favor.

social media marketing tipsSocial media marketing is the process of building awareness about you, your products or services through the various social media channels.

The ultimate goal of any social media marketing campaign is to drive traffic to a website, increase the visibility of a product, gain more social media followers or find more customers.

The most popular social media networks today are: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram and Linkedin.

Why is social media marketing important?

Social Media marketing is important because:

It’s the fastest way to spread the word about a new product, service or news item – A tweet can go rival in minutes and spread a message around the Word faster than TV or other traditional media
It’s a trend – Millions of people spend a good amount of their time on social media networks so if you ‘need them’ you know where to find them
It’s the new marketing – Back in the old days, marketers found out that many people spend time in their cars driving so they thought of the billboards on the roads. Today people are spending time on social media so as a marketer you have to start thinking this way too.
It’s the new influencer – Recent studies show that social media is becoming a great sales channel and more and more companies are stating that they get customers from Facebook or Twitter.
Social Media Marketing tips for beginners
How can you take advantage of social media? How can beginners build a proper social media presence fast?

Read and follow our 10 tips below:

1. Decide which social media platform(s) to use

Social Media Platforms

As a beginner to social media you have to choose one or two social media platforms and concentrate on those rather than trying to work on all platforms at the same time. This is a mistake that many beginners do and at the end they quit without having any benefit.

A nice way to find out which platform is best suited to your niche is to find the influencers and analyse where they have success.

For example, find out the leaders in your niche and check out the number of Facebook fans, twitter followers, Google+ followers, Pinterest followers etc.

If they have 100,000 Facebook fans but only 1000 twitter followers then this is a good indication that FB is more suitable for your niche than twitter.

It is also a sign that you are more likely to have success with FB than twitter, so you can use your time more efficiently and engage more on FB rather than any other platform.

2. Optimize your social media profiles
Once you decide which social media tools you will use (at least for the beginning), the next step is to optimise your profiles on those sites. By optimizing your profiles you increase your chances of getting more followers and it is also a good way to boost your SEO efforts.

Some general rules that apply to all sites are:

Use a real photo, showing your face – avoid using animals, places or anything that is not real. Social media is about connecting people and if you want to have a trusted profile you need to get out of your cage and put your face on the web!
Write a good description about yourself or your company – What is your background or expertise? What are you proud off? Mention this is your profile.
Give an indication to users what type of info you will share – Although this is not necessary, I like to read in profiles what kind of info to expect from the particular person. For example in my twitter profile I wrote: “..tweeting SEO, social media, internet marketing tips and advice”.
Include a link to your website (where applicable) – On Facebook include a link in the ‘About section’, on Twitter and Pinterest in the ‘Web site Section’, on Google+ in the ‘Contributor to’ section. In other words, do use your social media profiles for SEO purposes as well.

3. Connect your website or blog with your social media pages

After you have your social media profiles ready the next step is to connect your website with your social media pages. There is a certain procedure to follow for each platform and it is very important that you do it correctly.

A correct binding between the two means that search engines and social media websites know which website corresponds to which social media page.

For example, when I created the Google+ page for reliablesoft.net, Google+ did not know that this was the official page of the site until I have added the publisher verification code on my site.

4. Add social media buttons on your website

Social Media Links

Besides connecting your website with the respective business pages on social media, you also need to add social media buttons on your website so that readers can easily share your content.

Depending on the platform there are many ways and plugins to do that, I suggest you search Google using “how to add social media buttons to xxxxxx” – replace xxxxx with the platform your website is based.

For example, if you are using wordpress search google for “how to add social media buttons to wordpress”.

As a general rule of thumb, keep the buttons above the fold to increase exposure and have in mind that larger buttons get more clicks than smaller buttons.

5. Find and follow the influencers in your niche

Influencers to follow

So far we have selected the most appropriate social media tools for our niche, optimized our social media profiles, connected our website with the social media pages and added the buttons on our pages for more interaction.

The next obvious step is to find people to follow but most importantly to gradually build our tribe of followers.

I would say that there are 5 basic steps to follow to get more followers and these are described in points 6-10 below.

Before getting into that, you should first find and follow the influencers in your niche.

It is almost certain that they will not follow you back because you have a new account with no followers but doing so is important for 3 reasons:

Social media platforms will use this information to make suggestions on who to follow so by following popular people in your niche is like telling them that you are also in that niche.
When you follow popular people who are likely to get followed by others as well. A trick many people use is to follow the followers of a popular person because they know that some will follow them back as well.
They will most probably share important and useful information about the niche so you have a chance to learn something new and re-share that with your followers.

6. Keep a balance between following and followers
Once you start following people you should always have in mind that it’s better to keep a balance between the number of people you follow and the number of people they follow you back.

This is important especially in Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest and the reasons are a lot:

Software applications are using this ratio (followers/following) to make suggestions on ‘who to follow’ so if you have a very high ratio you minimize your chances of getting new quality followers.
It is a matter of trust – Who do you think has a trusted profile: someone with 1000 followers but following 2500 or someone with 550 followers that follows 510?
A balanced profile is better for SEO – SEO’s have been talking the last couple of months about the importance of social media for SEO and how things are changing and although it is not yet confirmed, it is more likely that people with strong social media profiles are in better position that those with weak profiles.
A strong profile in this case is someone that has more followers than following and someone that is followed by people who are considered influencers in the niche.

7. Share interesting content (text, images, videos)

share valuable content

This is the foundation for having a successful social media marketing campaign. When we talk about publishing content we always say that ‘content is king’ and this true in social media as well.

If you share interesting and useful content you can get more re-shares, more visitors to your website and under some conditions more customers as well.

What is interesting content? From my experience (and certain studies) this is a combination off:

Articles/Stories/Pages related to your niche but not only from your own website.
Interesting statistics about your niche
Motivational Quotes related to your niche or otherwise
Research studies
Images and Videos
Funny stuff- whatever your niche, you can share once in a while a joke, a funny image or video to make your followers smile.
Don’t forget about hashtags – hashtags (#) can make your content more searchable so don’t forget to use hashtags in the networks that support it (Twitter, Google+).

8. Post many times per day but don’t overdo it
A common question by people who are just beginning on social media is “how many times should I post per day?” The answer depends on the network. There are many studies analysing the effect of posting frequency and some best practices are:

Facebook personal page – As many times as you want
Facebook business page – No more than 1-2 times per day and no more than 7 times per week. There are studies that support this guideline.
Twitter – The more you tweet the more exposure you get.
Google+ Business page and Google+ profile page – as many times as you want but don’t overdo it because this may create the opposite results.
Pinterest – a few times per day is enough

9. Don’t forget to follow back
Most people concentrate on how to get new followers but they forget to follow back those who have already followed them.

Every day you should create the habit of viewing the people who are already following you and decide who to follow back.

If you don’t do this on a regular basis then most likely some will un-follow you and this is why you may sometimes notice a decrease in the number of followers.

10. Follow the rules and be patient
Social media networks have rules to keep spammers away. For example, there is a limit on twitter on the number of people you can follow per day; there is also a limit on Google+ on the number of people you can add/delete from your circles, Facebook has its own rules etc.

This means that it may take some time to build thousands of followers so you need to be patient and not try to rush into results either by breaking the rules (your account will be suspended) or by spending your money in ‘buying followers or tweets’ or anything similar.

Try to spend your time in creating a great social media profile that will stand over time and why not become one of the authoritative profiles in your niche.

Conclusion
When it comes to social media there are 2 important pillars. The first one has to do with the setup of your social media profiles and the second one is about usage i.e. how you use your social media account.

For the first pillar, it is important to engage in the networks more suited to your niche and to have a proper connection between your social media pages and website.

For the second pillar, it is important to follow the right people, be followed by the right people and share relevant and interesting content always by adhering to the rules of the different social media networks.